Portret van professor J.C. Matthes c. 1874 - 1887

This photograph of Professor J.C. Matthes was made by Albert Greiner in the Netherlands, some time in the late 19th century. We can think of this image as a product of the changing social role of the university in the 19th century, when the Dutch government reformed higher education with an emphasis on scholarship and research. Men like Matthes occupied new positions of cultural authority, and the formal portrait – already a well-established genre – was an important way of representing that authority. Consider the sitter's suit and tie, his confident gaze, and the very fact of him being photographed at all. Photography at this time was becoming more accessible, yet it remained a specialized skill. And so the photographic portrait became a way for people to publicly declare their status, aligning themselves with a modern, professional, and progressive culture. To understand this image better, we can research the history of Dutch higher education in this period, and the ways in which photography played a role in shaping social identities.